About Water Softeners

FYI. One of 51 cities banning water softeners and it was the citizens who voted in favour of it.

Officials search for illegal water softeners in Santa Clarita Valley

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — The Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District announced last week that it is on the hunt for homeowners using illegal water softener systems, The Santa Clarita Valley Signal reported.

In an effort to reduce the amount of chloride discharged into the Santa Clara watershed, residents approved a ban on all brine-generating water softeners in 2008.

Officials estimate that as many as 2,000 people in the Santa Clarita Valley still own banned water softeners.

Residents who are caught with banned softeners will be given 30 days to apply for the water softener rebate program or get rid of the machines, according to the story.

If the residents fail to comply, they will be fined $1,000, according to the story

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I've  received a number of comments from a resident on the subject of water softeners. Apparently there is a growing awareness of the harm created by the salt.

I had a softener machine once. Aurora water has always been exceptionally hard. Kettles, faucets and shower heads became heavily scaled with lime within days of new use. Toilet bowls quickly acquired hard lime deposits. 

The water softener didn't work in my house. There were too many children. No amount of salt was enough to keep the water soft.

My commenter drew my attention to something I hadn't noticed. The water is not hard any more. The kettle, the most obvious place to notice, has no scale at all and it's probably a year old. 

It seems since  water from the aquifer has been mixed with water from Lake Ontario, its hardness

is  reduced tremendously .It's more evident apparently at the south end of town and mid section of town..

Water softeners are no longer useful in most  parts of the town. 

Furthermore, they are harmful.

The process of softening hard water is accomplished with salt. It removes the minerals. One of the reasons it was easy for me to get rid of the softener was that softened  water didn't taste so good. 

No-one ever pointed out  that water with  minerals removed is not good for your health.

Neitherdid anyone ever point out, the salt used to soften water is not good for the environment. 

Yet  evidence abounds.

How is it with all the foo-fer-a about the environment...about protecting our water source...how is it 

the harmful use of water softeners has never been brought to public attention. 

With  all the environmental engineers on the public payroll. federal,provincial,regional and municipal,  why is such an obvious  source of damage is so easily overlooked.

Are they asleep at the switch?  

The Region of Waterloo is carrying out a study.

I believe  we use  brine in the cooling system for ice  at the Aurora Family Leisure Complex.

As well as a hundred thousand of gallons of water a day to produce ice that isn't hard enough for 

hockey and being soft, is only useful for figure skating ,we also now know   brine  funnelled into the sanitary sewers from the complex , is not removed by  treatment  and goes into Lake Ontario.

That can't be good. 

Now there's talk about diverting sewage from Aurora to Lake Simcoe. 

So even as we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on storm water ponds to filter out toxic residue 

prior to  water reaching streams and waterways, we  consciously dump  tons of  salt with the  direct result of degrading  the waters of the lake. 

Go figure.